Using human data to assess the speed of the processes that lead to the disease, the University of Cambridges’ researchers revealed that it follows a totally different pattern than previously imagined.

Alzheimer’s disease affects multiple areas of the brain at the same time, and against popular belief, it does not begin with a single location from which a chain reaction begins. An international team led by the University of Cambridge examined it.

These findings, which were published in the journal ” Science Advances,” could have significant implications for the development of potential treatments.

This study opens new avenues for understanding the progression of this disease and other neurodegenerative pathologies, as well as new avenues for developing future treatments.

It’s thought that the rate at which the disease spreads to different parts of the organ determines how quickly a person’s condition deteriorates. 

This was not the case, according to a new study that looked at five distinct datasets on both dead and live Alzheimer’s patients.

Instead, scientists discovered that the disease develops separately at multiple places in the brain from an early stage.

The rate at which these clusters grow, not the rate at which they spread, determines the rate at which a patient’s condition deteriorates.

“The key discovery is that stopping the replication of aggregates, rather than their propagation, is going to be more effective at the stages of the disease that we studied,” explained Professor Tuomas Knowles, co-senior author of the study.

Dr Georg Meisl, the lead author on the paper, added: “The thinking had been that Alzheimer’s develops in a way that’s similar to many cancers – the aggregates form in one region and then spread through the brain.

“But instead, we found that when Alzheimer’s starts, there are already aggregates in multiple regions of the brain and so trying to stop the spread between regions will do little to slow the disease.”

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